MANTRAS for THIRST - Ginger Buswell

MANTRAS FOR THIRST (AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY)

In the middle of a sidewalk in Los Angeles, a man on a bicycle balancing a crate of bananas between the handlebars holds out a flower, like handing a cup of water to a marathon runner, and says, “Here angel. See you up there when we’re all angels.”

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On the bus, we’re all on our phones—we’re all holding our phones, phones in our pockets, earbuds in our ears, talking into mouthpieces, scrolling through images, the bus passing through the city, scrolling the streets outside the windows, everyone inside the bus swaying, floating behind the windows—and there, that girl by the window: she’s holding a guppy in a bag. A clear plastic bag with water, and a guppy.

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By the lake, chalky and turbid as the sky and the dirt, everything draws from the same marbled palette: tall dry grass and reeds, herons roosting in a stand of trees and a single white bird tracing the surface of the water. A tawny bass jumps out in pursuit of flies and I watch from a tuft of prickly grasses, a saffron bird rustling nearby, the only present moment I have known.

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Along the river, we move laterally like crabs until we forget which side we started on. Fluttering like birds for warmth, we rustle in the crinkling air. The familiar sound keeps us company. Nikola Tesla found the earth to be a conductor of acoustical resonance. Now we will too, although we’ve never met.

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Playing dead in the pool, a two-engine plane bellies across a cloudless blue kidney bean and I spread my arms wide in salutation, torso breaking the surface of the water, and barrel roll down as it disappears over the edge: blue behind and blue below us, between us nothing but sky.

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Somewhere underneath there is a well we can’t reach anymore, it’s buried so deep, like love, that’s so slippery to grasp, it’s like water. Is that it?

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At the gem show in Tucson, farther from the ocean than I’ve ever been, amid all the rocks and minerals I play a conch shell: one long clear note that resonates in the stones and sets off through the desert basin to find the ocean. Everyone under the canopy tent pausing to wonder. The conch shell engraved with Sanskrit: om mani padme hum rounding a lotus blossom. The Himalayas as far from the ocean as I am here. And conch shells perfect spirals,

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just as mantras grow wider and more perfect with their repetition,

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just as sound waves radiate from conch shells in pursuit of wider seas.

Ginger Buswell has served as editor at such prestigious publications as When in Drought and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her writing has appeared infrequently in Sparkle & Blink, Harlequin Creature, Yay! LA Magazine, and the A3 Review. She lives in Los Angeles with two well-meaning chihuahuas.